That spring represented an emotional turning point, and it also marked an important evolution in my skating. I had become frustrated with my coach, Orville’s, jump training techniques and had begun to thoughtfully experiment in the parking lot of my apartment building and in front of Maxwell’s condominium complex. Wearing tennis shoes, I adopted the proper stance leading into each specific jump: a loop, flip or lutz. Although my toe loop, salchow and waltz were not stellar examples, at least I could do them; so they were omitted from dry land remediation. Previously, my outdoor jumping practice focused on launching myself into the air and forcing rotation. However, skating requires more technique and finesse than brute force. Dissecting the basic single jumps, I learned to initiate rotation, spring, and turn around my axis landing properly on one foot.
The loop exercise amounted to standing on my left leg, looking over my shoulder in the direction of intended rotation, then beginning to turn while jumping. No athlete can jump straight up, pull his arms in, and expect to rotate without initiating rotation through contact with the earth (or ice). The skater must push off, thereby creating rotational force while lifting into the air. Before discovering this, I usually threw myself haphazardly upward and pulled in with all of my might, often crouching into a fetal position. Adults commonly make this mistake at the axel level, and full-grown skaters like Stephanie in Martinsville had displayed it prominently. She could complete all of the fundamental jumps with attractive posture but was subconsciously motivated to curl into a ball when trying to muster the enormous amount of power needed to complete another aerial half turn.
In street shoes, I easily popped upward and landed a loop comfortably on my left foot. In theory, the loop (and other single jumps) requires a full 360-degree revolution in the air. In practice, the action of initiating rotation from an edge and landing on a curved edge reduce that amount significantly. Therefore, the naïve act of standing on two feet while facing forward, jumping up, and trying to land facing the original direction is not necessarily applicable to figure skating jumps. Once I consciously digested this knowledge, a barrier collapsed that had been holding me hostage at the half jump stage.
Similarly, the asphalt flip consisted of a characteristic stance, planting the vaulting toe, initiating rotation from that toe while pushing upward, and landing on the same foot. I practiced the lutz similarly off-ice. As a scientist, understanding was critical for success even outside academic and professional circles. Once I comprehended the synthesis of movement and position required to complete these simple jumps, I began to experiment in a corner of Hans Koenig’s Ice Chalet. Initially, I did this when Orville was not around, on my one available weekday morning, in the evening, or on Saturday. That weekday morning was generally preferable since few people could witness my floundering.
My first success came with the loop. I had been doing a sloppy version of the loop under Orville’s guidance and Alex’s well-meaning criticism. Skating backward, I glided on both feet and swept myself into a leap, pushing with the supposed free foot. This produced a tracing characteristic of the push-off into a backward outside edge lobe or school figure. The free foot, rather than a clean spring from the skating leg, initiated my faulty loop jump. After exploring the possibilities in the parking lot, I performed a left forward inside three-turn and jumped from the left foot directly following the turn. The turn provided rotational momentum while placing me solidly over the correct axis. It may have been small, but these musings quickly led to a genuine loop jump, one that grew quickly but remained associated with the forward inside three-turn preparation. Since then, I have witnessed many adult skaters learning the loop in this manner. It seems to be a standard teaching practice. I do not know why Orville never introduced this intuitive method, especially since I entered the majority of my forward spins from a left forward inside three-turn.
I readily completed a standstill flip on the ice that was absolutely identical to my parking lot version. Fortunately, what I did on the ground translated to the ice. As a next step, I added the slightest inkling of motion. A careful forward glide preceded a right forward outside three-turn placing me of the correct back inside edge. Moving backward at a snail’s pace, I tentatively placed my left toe pick into the ice, stopping all movement. Pausing there for a thoughtful moment, I finally gathered the courage to hop around to the landing edge. This first walk-through encouraged me to repeat the process more smoothly: gliding, turning, picking, and hopping in contiguous baby steps. Tiny and locked into a remote corner of Hansie’s already small rink, I had landed the most insignificant flip jump in the history of skating.
But for me this maneuver represented a revelation both in personal achievement and understanding. I had broken the jump down to the atomic level, analyzing each piece and stringing them together in a training wheels exercise that formed the nucleus of future toe jumping success. I had essentially learned the flip on my own, in spite of checks cashed by Coach Orville with the funny hat and cigar.
Immediately following a few small but fluid flips, I repeated the learning process with the lutz jump and achieved similar results. Excited about my breakthrough, I telephoned Maxwell Svenssen at work.
“I landed my first flip and my first lutz!” I announced jubilantly.
Max and I had been dating long enough for him to know approximately what these terms meant. They were jumps, jumps I previously could not do. He had seen me practicing them outside his condo, and continued our romantic involvement, regardless. “Congratulations, Kate,” he returned supportively. Max could not linger on the phone; he had a cat waiting in the examination room probably trembling in its owner’s arms.
After a couple of weeks, I boldly executed my embryonic new jumps at the Sunday morning adult session. Orville latched onto them immediately. Where there had been no flip or lutz, suddenly these little wonders appeared. I obviously had not learned them from him. In my lesson, Orville mocked me for skating so slowly. Actually, I had graduated from the walk-through stage and approached each jump with a couple of strokes. I certainly was not skating fast, but no longer completed the jump as a series of haltingly assembled pieces. Orville seemed to have an obsessive fascination with speed, which may have been perfectly acceptable for a more advanced or younger student. In contrast to my truly decent spins, I was only a beginning jumper.
“You are skating so slow,” Orville criticized extending the final word until it filled all available time and space, capturing the attention of everyone in the rink who subsequently looked in our direction. Not only was I embarrassed, Orville had made me angry. He probably assumed I had taken a lesson from someone at another facility who taught me the walk-through method that resulted in this slow motion jump. I had defied his high speed training methodology; however, I had done so of my own volition and not under the supervision of another instructor, though that probably would not have been a bad idea.
“Pick it up a little, Kate,” the man directed, smiling to conceal his suspicions under good-natured teasing.
Each skater reaches a crossroads when he or she is ready to add speed to a given maneuver. In my opinion, I had not reached that juncture. Why couldn’t Orville simply be pleased that I could do the jump at all? I had attained a starting point and could build from there with more experience. Why did Orville expect me to learn at the accelerated pace of a ten-year-old? Even if I were ready to take these prototypes to the next level, why did Orville have to offer his suggestion in such a condescending manner?
After I told Orville that sneaker practice at my apartment spawned these sad little jumps, his mood softened. I had only been taking lessons from this coach for a few months, and the first signs of damage had already appeared in our relationship. I was not happy with Orry’s display of moodiness but was not ready to dump him yet, especially since I felt trapped by Hans Koenig’s Ice Chalet and its limited selection of pros.
Orry only managed to root the seed of distrust that had been planted when his jump training techniques did not work for me, and he seemed unwilling or unable to explore other alternatives, leaving me to achieve better results through independent analysis of the problem. His negativity did not destroy my enthusiasm for my humble achievement. Regardless of speed, quality or perfection; I could finally execute all of the basic skating jumps. As I became more comfortable with these new skills, speed developed naturally. Hansie’s rink was inherently too small for breakneck skating, especially when occupied by a healthy group of adults and/or youngsters. Skating at a normal pace entering each jump represented a major accomplishment and eventually happened with only minor coaxing.
As summer approached, I enjoyed a pleasant assortment of jumps; all technically acceptable, though not brilliant. They resembled Stephanie’s measured cautious hops, elements I never admired but always respected. My flying camel had evolved into a respectable stunt, but as often as I completed a good one, I slipped off the landing edge and crashed to the ice in a stunning display of skating’s brutality. I attacked the flying camel with the power and strength that Orville sought in my simple jumps. About fifty percent of the time, my commitment resulted in a praiseworthy flying spin; while the other fifty percent ended in disaster. Orville probably had trouble separating my spinning talent from my jumping ineptitude. While I wondered why Orry could not appreciate my modest frame-by-frame flip jump, my coach did not understand how I could sacrifice my body to the flying camel and wimp out on a much easier skill.
The fact that I could execute a truly commendable flying camel before I could land a flip jump of any sort is probably the most bizarre footnote in my personal skating saga.
I may not have initiated an era of understanding with my mother at her wedding, but I did achieve a sense of closure. As Otthilde began a new life with Arthur Wainwright, I celebrated her happiness. While I could not necessarily agree with everything Otthilde did or believed, I wanted her to be happy in her senior years. I had wished for an apology from Otthilde and faced the very real possibility that I might never receive it. That revelation had set me free, free from the neediness that still lingered for my mother’s approval, thus crossing another threshold into adulthood. I had formed a relationship with my father and developed an understanding of the limited one I could expect from my mother. Though I had been financially independent of my parents for years, I had never been spiritually emancipated.
Chapter 67 posted 2/11/03
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